


Thirty-Four Sins

by DaftPunk_DeLorean



Series: Unadulterated Sadness and Angst [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood, Cutting, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Tony, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Tony Feels, Tony Whump, Tony has very poor coping mechanisms, emotional distress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaftPunk_DeLorean/pseuds/DaftPunk_DeLorean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty-four. Thirty-four people died today on their watch. On <em>his</em> watch. It never got any easier. And in the aftermath, after the bodies were pulled from the rubble and the Avengers returned to the tower, Tony could pay his penance. He could atone for every life lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty-Four Sins

Tony took a moment to just stare, as he always did, at the swath of destruction through the city. They’d tried to contain it as much as they could, but sometimes the threat was too big, too powerful. Usually they could redirect the fighting out of the city, or evacuate civilians, but sometimes they just didn’t have enough time. 

Thirty-four. 

Thirty-four people died today on their watch. On _his_ watch. 

It never got easier. 

Civilians began to emerge from the subway tunnels and intact buildings, the streets had been cleared, and Tony and Hulk did the heavy lifting as Steve and Thor pulled body after body from beneath a collapsed building. Every time Tony picked up a bio-signature on the HUD, he hoped it would be a live person, reaching for the light as the rubble was cleared away. Every time he lifted the broken concrete away, he choked back bile when he saw the crushed body and the blank, cloudy eyes. 

There was a neat row of white sheets lined up on the crushed pavement of the street, standing silent like a row of graves, each sheet hiding a body. The first responders inspected each one in turn, looking for identification, so they could tell the hysterical mommas and crying children beyond the safety tape whether or not their loved one made it out alive. 

Already there were jeers from the gathering crowd, blaming the Avengers once again for bringing down this kind of destruction on innocent people.

It never got easier.

When every body was accounted for (thirty-four, his mind kept screaming at him), he and the rest of the team gathered near the quinjet. Clint’s arm was in a field brace and a sling, fractured because Tony was a split-second too late to take the hit that had been aimed at Clint. 

Everyone was silent. The crowd was deafening. Screams of anguish and grief and rage, ambulance sirens, helicopters, the roar of the quinjet’s engines; it all pressed in like water filling burning lungs. Tony recoiled when a glass bottle shattered against the side of the quinjet, narrowly missing Steve’s head.

“This is your fault!” a man from the crowd screamed, his eyes wild and filled with fury as he threw another bottle that shattered on the pavement when it hit Tony’s armor. “Their blood is on your hands!”

They all stared at him in shock, until Steve finally moved, turning towards the quinjet with a jerky motion. 

“Let’s go, guys. We can’t do any more here,” he said quietly, and they all turned away from the crowd, except Tony. 

“You guys go ahead,” he mumbled into the comms. It was normal for him to fly on his own back to the tower, so he let the quinjet take off, but remained standing there, alone in the street, numbly watching the man who threw the bottles. 

He let the screams of rage wash over him. Each one was like the lash of a whip. He didn’t even register the others in the crowd, who called out their gratitude, holding their loved ones who had been saved. He just stared and that man, who stared right back as if challenging Tony to come over there and stop him.

“Jarvis, mute,” Tony murmured, and the sounds of the crowd disappeared, leaving him with crushing silence, punctuated only by the sound of his racing heart and shallow breathing.

When would the fight ever end? The lives lost? Was their mere presence really attracting supervillains, bringing harm to the very people they tried to protect? The number seemed to get bigger every time, and Tony never forgot them. He knew the name of every single person that had been killed because the Avengers hadn’t been good enough, or fast enough. He knew if they had children, or if they _were_ children. He knew what they used to do for work, and whether they were from Manhattan or moved here from Kansas, and if they’d left behind a cat that got shuffled into a shelter to wonder why it’s human friend never came home. He kept a list in a file inside a file inside a file behind a firewall, and sometimes he just pulled it up and stared at it. Stared at their faces.

Sometimes having an eidetic memory wasn’t such a great thing. 

Once back at the tower, Tony stripped out of his armor, letting the silence press on his shoulders until his back was bowed. In the shower, he tried to let his mind go blank, his water too hot and his skin too red and raw. He held his breath and let the spray pound him in the face until his lungs burned, then held his breath another twenty seconds until he thought he might pass out. He gasped a huge gulp of air, inhaling water, and stumbled backward, panicking for a moment as he coughed the water from his lungs. This was useless. 

He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, thinking. He could go to bed right now, toss and turn for a few hours, and maybe fall into a fitful sleep, only to be woken with nightmares for nights on end. He could go work out some frustration in the gym with the others in the morning. He could take a sleeping pill or have a drink and watch infomercials. He could work on repairs to the armor. He clenched and unclenched his fists, and scratched absently up and down his thighs through his pajama pants. Finally he stood resolutely, gathered a neatly folded change of clothing, and headed to his workshop.

“Jarvis, pull up the HUD display,” he ordered, setting the clothing aside and pulling up a stool to a bank of screens at one of his worktables. Jarvis complied, and Tony went through the feed from post-battle, pausing on the face of each dead body. He ran a variety of search algorithms, until he knew the identity of each person, their family, right down to how they liked their coffee. Once all thirty-four faces had been identified and their various photos smiled at him, Tony sat back and looked at them all, feeling sick with guilt. 

He didn’t know how to stop it. How to bring the number to zero. He woke up in panics night after night, imagining everyone he knew and loved being on that list. He had panic attacks in public because he would see a child playing in the park or a college-student studying in a café, and think that they could be next, that he might be looking at them on the last day of their life. That an attack would come and Tony would be pulling their bodies from the rubble before the day was out.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to the faces on his screen, and added them, one by one, to the master list comprised of hundreds of names. Each one he knew by heart. He closed the screen down and pushed away from the worktable, and went to a locked drawer in a cabinet at the back of the workshop, far from the glass entrance. In the drawer was bandages, peroxide, ointment, a stack of clean towels, and a small box buried under the towels. He pulled it out, taking a deep breath before opening it.

“Sir, may I take the liberty of calling a friend to keep you company? Perhaps Miss Potts or Captain Rogers?” Jarvis said abruptly, but Tony continued to stare at the contents of the box.

“No.” he said flatly.

“Perhaps some relaxing music? I could play the meditation program that Doctor Banner compiled for you.”

Tony ignored Jarvis, selecting an x-acto knife with a new blade, and carefully put the box back. These weren’t used in the shop for anything but this purpose.

“Sir, I implore you not to do this agai-“

“Jarvis, mute,” Tony said quietly, and he could practically feel Jarvis vibrating with irritation and concern, as if he were a real human being helplessly watching him do this. Tony leaned against a cold, metal cabinet and slid down to the floor where he wasn’t visible from the door. To anyone else, it was just unused space in the workshop. 

To Tony, it was a sanctuary. A retreat from the chaos. Everything was orderly and perfect here, in his cave of gleaming metal and blinking power lights. Every surface was hard and cold, offering no comfort, not that he deserved it. Here, he was invisible. Here, he could atone.

Tony stretched his legs out and leaned against the cabinet, shivering at the cold. He held out his arms in front of him. No scars. Just clean, unmarred skin, ready to shoulder his legacy. 

He knew intimately how deeply he could cut. How far the blade would have to go to reach bone. What it _felt_ like to reach bone. He knew which veins to avoid, and how to cut around them. He knew when he’d gone to far and had to stumble in a panic to the tissue regenerator before he was ready. 

Two arms, seventeen cuts apiece. Thirty-four cuts total. He ran a thumb down his inner arm, feeling the velvety softness of the pale, delicate flesh, where his veins pressed green against the surface, waiting to open for him. Tony breathed deeply several times, until he could feel a rush of oxygen in his head.

He took his time, as he always did. This wasn’t just a punishment; this was a ritual. It meant nothing if he didn’t allow himself to feel every nuance of what he was doing to himself. That was the point; if someone paid with their life for his mistake, the least he could do is pay with his pain. 

He slowly pressed the sharp point of the blade into his inner arm, just below the crook of his elbow, until half the blade was buried in his arm and a thick bead of blood welled up. He slowed his breathing, then slowly, carefully pulled the blade across the full width of his forearm, watching the cut open wide. He gasped when he removed the blade, already shaking, and watched as the blood filled the gap and began to roll in a rivulet down his forearm.

Spencer Martin. That was one. He was an accountant for a small chain of sporting goods stores, and was an Army combat vet. In his spare time, he volunteered at the VA, and had probably met Steve there on more than one occasion. 

Tony repeated the cut precisely one centimeter below the first. There was no haphazard dragging of the blade here, only precise engineer’s perfection. He clenched his fist, letting his eyes close and head thump back against the metal as he hissed in air through his teeth. Tears were already streaming and he had to bite back soft, gasping cries of pain. He would be a good five cuts in before the endorphins kicked in. He breathed deeply, keeping it regular and even.

Laurie Winters. That was two. She was a florist who had just opened a new shop last month, and her husband had died of cancer a year before. She had two children who had now lost both their parents before the age of ten.

He cut another precise line, his breaths coming more labored and growing thick and syrupy in his throat, like the air suddenly had less oxygen in it.

Mike Reeves. That was three. He had a housekeeping business with his wife, but had taken on extra work as a night custodian, saving up so he could send his daughter to space camp that summer.

At the fifth cut, just as he’d predicted, the endorphin rush began to course through his veins. It started as a rushing in his head, then a pounding in his already racing heart, and a quickening in his breath. He was nearly panting now, and he let his arm lay loose across his lap for a moment, his lips tingling. God, he felt _high_ , like he was a junkie sitting here with a needle in his arm, not a blade. Everything was simultaneously dulled and sharpened. The world slowed down into blurred tracks of light, but was distressingly focused into a blinding pinpoint. He could feel the emotional pain starting to drain out of him, and it was a deep relief, like swallowing ice water after eating a bite of too-hot food that burned all the way down.

Tony watched the cuts with dazed, half-lidded eyes, and the little pools of blood in each one pulsed with his heartbeat. He stared until his vision distorted, clouded by the ugly tears that flooded down his cheeks and neck, dampening the collar of his tank. He could wipe them away, but there was no point. He’d done this enough times that he could do it with his eyes closed. He thought about the time there were 187 deaths, how it took days to find all the bodies. The cuts ran all the way up and down Tony’s arms and legs and chest and stomach, and it still didn’t feel like enough.

He raised the blade again, taking his time, since his hand was shaking. No jagged cuts allowed. He would have to re-do it if he messed up. He counted out each name, remembering their face and a detail of their life that had been cut short, until the burning, physical pain seemed to swallow his whole body and drive out the paralyzing emotional pain. Until all he could focus on was his cuts, the names, the numbers; not the constant, worming twist of ever-present panic and guilt that he carried with him at all times.

Sidney Greenberg. Last cut. Third-grader at Central Elementary. Eight years old. Liked baseball and cats, wanted to be a veterinarian and an Avenger when she grew up. 

Tony had been silent as always through his ritual, but this one made him choke out a strangled sob, his shoulders shaking as he curled in on himself, his bleeding arms cradled in his lap. He cried silently and with bitter intensity, gasping great shuddering breaths of air, as he bled pain from his body, bled his shame onto the floor. The blood saturated the thighs of his pajama pants, and pooled in deep garnet on the floor, but smeared in bright, garish red on his skin. It almost looked fake in the bright workshop lights.

He heaved a sobbing breath, clutching the blade tighter. He wasn’t done. He cut once more, for Clint. For not getting there fast enough to keep his friend from getting hurt. He figured Clint would probably kill him if he knew, but Tony would never tell him. Then one more cut, for Tony. For being so weak that this was the only way he could cope with his demons. Because whether he drowned himself in a bottle of bourbon or sliced himself to shreds, he was still mutilating himself. Unlike the booze, at least he couldn’t accidentally hurt someone else with this.

He finally let the blade clatter to the floor from his limp hand, where it rolled away in a puddle of blood. Tony stared absently at it, as the sticky red liquid seeped back into the track left by the knife where it’d rolled. He hiccupped and panted through his sobs, clenching and unclenching his fists so he could watch the blood surge and ebb from the cuts. He counted each heartbeat, each pulse of pain in his arms, until he felt so detached that the pain almost became secondary. Until he was numb inside. Only then did the tears start to dry up, and his breaths become steady again. 

When he moved, it was like he was an automaton, watching himself from another body, completely separate from his emotions. He got up slowly, steadying himself on the cabinet because his vision immediately tunneled, and left a bloody handprint on the surface. He got a clean towel from the drawer and wet it in the nearby work sink, and dabbed carefully at his arms. If this were anyone else, he would insist they go to a hospital for stitches or staples. He couldn’t imagine actually doing that himself.

He rinsed the blood from his hands, letting the clear water flow over the cuts, then hissed through his teeth as he cleaned each one with peroxide and applied butterfly bandages where he could. He might be stupid in a lot of ways considering his chosen coping mechanism, but he wasn’t stupid enough to risk infection. Then he applied ointment and wrapped both arms in thick gauze bandages, before assessing the mess. He sighed and bent to clean the blood from the floor, then stripped his soiled pants and put everything in the biohazard laundry, where their uniforms and other post-battle garments went to be cleaned, since they were usually covered in blood and fluids, anyway. 

He pulled on his change of clothes, a pair of sweats and a long-sleeved t-shirt, to cover the bandages. He liked to keep the cuts as long as he could, at least until they scabbed over, before putting his arms in the tissue regenerator. He liked the reminders. He liked looking at the deep cuts and knowing that he’d, in some small way, atoned for his failures. He liked the fire that licked up his arms with every tiny movement or brush of fabric against his skin, or the white-hot bloom of pain when someone unknowingly grabbed his arm. He brushed his fingers over them while he lay in bed, repeating the names over and over when he couldn’t sleep. And when it was all done and he’d regenerated the skin, it would be smooth and clear and ready for the next time, quietly keeping his secret from his friends and teammates.

Tony picked up his blade, carefully cleaning and drying it, before returning it to the box in the drawer. The endorphins still flowed in his system, but the exhaustion was pulling him down already. He would sleep deeply, free from the nightmares for at least one night. They would be back at cleanup again tomorrow, the armor reminding him of the lives he couldn’t save as it pressed painfully into his arms while he cleared away rubble. He turned out the workshop lights one by one, walking in his bare feet to the elevator and hoping he wouldn’t meet anyone on the way to his private floor. The only evidence left of his ritual was the bloody handprint on the back of the metal cabinet.


End file.
